FIVE!

Guess what we have?  Go ahead...guess!

There are FIVE of them!  Did you guess what they are?  From the sounds of them, they sound like a bunch of howler monkies but they are five baby raccoons 5-6 days old.   Their eyes and ears are not open.  Their little ears are just beginning to flip out from their head and their eyes hopefully will open any time.  I've never had 5 at one time so little before.  I usually get 1-3 and then further in the season I'll get 1 or two (5 years ago I had 16 babies at one time - but most were a couple of months old and didn't require bottle feeding).

In the mean time, we are back on baby patrol.  They are doing great, eating from a nurser well, doing their business well and often and screaming like crazy.  So far they only get up once in the night to be fed - usually between midnight and 2 AM and I am on the night shift and early morning shift.

After feeding I rub their head and neck and they pur like kittens.  I love that sound!  The screaming I could do without.  Hopefully once their eyes are open they will settle down a little.

We weren't really prepared for them this year (you know the Big D and all that nonsense) so we scrambled and got together what we could find and made due until Monday when I could go get new nursers and kitten formula.  They like the nurser a lot better than the dropper.

Both kids are excited to have babies this year and are a big help in taking care of them.  They get the afternoon shift after school and go a great job!

Now if we can just get them out of the howler monkey stage ;-0)

Save The Date

Saturday, May 1 you are invited to attend 2010 Shearing Day!  It will be held at the old lumber yard (traditional arts building area over by the county annex).  Whispering Pine Alpacas will be there to be sheared and my llamas and alpacas will be there to be sheared.
Come say hi.  You can learn the difference between the Llama and Alpaca, pet them both, visit with some spinners and weavers and we will be doing some other fiber demonstrations like wet felting and needle felting.
Come by 10:00 and see my kids and animals in the Brown County Spring Blossom Parade and then wander over to the shearing event.  There will be lots of other things going on in BC that day so I'm sure you can find something to do.
Come see Patrick, Jack, Ted, Sidney, Xanchoo and Peach!

This is Patrick - my shy boy.  He is also my biggest Alpaca.  He has an aswesome fleece!  So Soft and when you love on him, you just want to bury your face in him he is so soft.

Here is Ted (Teddy Bear).  You can come hear him "sing".  He is very vocal and has a lot to say.  Hmmm
Ted will also eat out of your hand so we will have some treats available for you to share with him (and the others).

This is Sidney, after she went through the sprinklers and in need of a brush out.  She is my mama Llama (mom to Peach and Xanchoo).  I'm hoping that she is with cria now and if she is she will be due sometime in July or August.

This is Jack (I call him Hippy Jack or Jack Jack).  His "bangs" are in his eyes most of the time.  He is a Suri Alpaca so you can see the difference in the two breeds of Alpacas when you visit.  He is a bit high strung too so you may be able to pet him or maybe not.

The boy child and Xanchoo.  Xanny is just 2 years old and is my youngest.  He still has a lot of spunk in him.  Last year during show season, he did very well taking first place in several events. Of course he had a very good handler last year and I'm hoping the same person will handle him this year - he needs it.

Last but not least we have Peach and the girl child.  Peach is my biggest Llama (tallest).  I sometimes have a hard time getting her halter on if she doesn't want it on as she sticks her nose up in the air and it makes it hard to reach.

So there you have it, your formal invitation to shearing.

The Princess Has A Birthday

So today the Princess turns 14!  Yes, I begin and end my week with my children turning another year older.

Here she is with Holly her alpaca (who sadly passed away a year ago this past December ;-0( )  Holly was a real character, she liked to compete in the PR events during the fair because she liked to dress up and show off.  She did not like showmanship because it was boring.  She did like obstacles because she got to run and jump over things, she tolerated pack class and liked the water hazard the best because she could lay down in it.  We miss her a lot.

Anyway, 14 years ago today I was lounging around St. Vincent hospital waiting for the Princess (or Lula Bell as I call her) to make her appearance.  She DID NOT want to be born!  She was born on a Tuesday evening (almost Wednesday) and I had been induced with her the day before at 9:00 AM.  Yes, she took her sweet time!

My parents came from Iowa to be with me and my friend Beth was there too and everyone kept coming in to entertain me for the day.  The doctors and nurses kept coming in to see how things were moving along, and they weren't.  At one point, they said that they needed to make a decision because she was in distress (this freaked me out).  I guess that was the motivation she needed because things started to progress a little faster after that.  It was still several hours before she was actually here I think total of 38 hours from the time they started to induce until she finally made it out.  Can you say STUBORN?  Not much has changed and I have NO IDEA where she gets it from - must be from her dad's side of the family ;-0)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LULA BELL!

Happy Birthday Soldier Boy!

My baby turns 8 today! I can hardly believe it. I remember the day he was born.
I had a doctors appointment and he was overdue. We made the decision to induce the next day and while I was standing with the nurse to make the appointment my water broke. I told her either my water broke or I just wet my pants. She said well now lets just go back in and have a look see and then decide what to do with you.

Sure enough my water had broken and they sent me straight to the hospital. I had the girl child with me and the dad person was on the road in Maryland. I was making frantic phone calls to who ever I could reach at the time...the girl child's dad - who came to the hospital to retreive her, my mom who then took over trying to reach the dad person - she was in Iowa, I'm in Indiana, he's somewhere in Maryland. All very exciting stuff. This all happened between 4:00 and 5:00 PM.


I did manage to drive myself to the hospital and when we got there I had a flat tire. The girl child's dad took care of that for me too.


I got checked in and put in a room and there I sat having very mild contractions that were really close. The nurse kept coming in to "check" to see if we needed to call the doctor in yet and nope, it wasn't time yet. About 9:00 pm she said it was time and the doctor arrived about 9:30 and the boy was born at 9:50.


I remember I was starving after he was born and the cafateria was closed and the nurse found a turkey tv dinner in the freezer so that is what I had to eat.

Here he is in his digital camos that I got him for his birthday. He was so excited with them that he wore them to school today. He wants to grow up and go into the air force and fly F22 Raptors.

I better not blink or that day will be tomorrow. I hate that my babies are growing up!

Projects Projects and More Projects

I know Christmas has come and gone, but as we all know, I am behind...These are some of the ornaments I made this year for co-workers and friends. They are free standing lace made on the embroidery machine and then I added the bead work. They are really pretty hanging on the tree with the lights. I'm not exactly sure how many I ended up making this year but I had 6 boxes of bulbs in four different colors most of the boxes had either 8 or 12 bulbs. I still have a few left so if you want the math challenge, knock yourself out.
In and amongst the ornaments, I was also making door prizes and auction items for two different 4-H awards dinners.
Every year I make a free standing lace bowl with the 4-H logo and fill it with candy for a door prize and since my kids are in 4-H in two different counties, we have two dinners and I make a bowl for each. The pink bowl was made for an auction item. All the money from the auction goes into 4-H scholarships.

I've been busy since Christmas making rugs (and curtains) - sadly no pictures yet. I just finished a rug for the boy in his favorite colors of blue and orange. He wants to put it in front of his bed in his new room when (if) we ever get a house to live in. The goal at the moment is to have something in place by the end for the school year. If we don't, we can't stay where we are (in the county, in the current schools etc.). I am really fighting moving back to Indy because I don't want to go back into apartment living and give up the animals. BUT there is nothing affordable with land to rent in the county where we are.

We looked at another house on Wednesday and everyone loves it. However there is a pending offer and we are waiting to hear if their financing went through or not. The kids are hoping not (not in a mean way but you know) so that we can make an offer and our funding is almost in place.

Anyway, back to some more finished projects.

I made this (Free Standing Lace) bowl for the boys teacher for Halloween. All 5 sides have a different ghost on it, and I made these little ghosts for his classmates (and some of my co-workers). There is a tootsie Pop inside each one. Everyone at work thought they were hilarious! I thought they were pretty cute too and were pretty fast to sew out and do.

For Thanksgiving, I made a bunch of Turkeys and pumpkins that were centerpieces for our Boy Scout Thanksgiving dinner. They also ended up being door prizes to one lucky person at each table. I also made a "grand" prize turkey for one lucky person.

All the boys took one of their den meetings to make place setting

turkeys for each guest in their family who would be attending our little shindig. They are made of Oreo cookies, candy corn, malt balls, mini reese peanut butter cuts and all held together with frosting. They were so fun to make and the boys got to eat the broken pieces. I think they broke the cookies on purpose just so they could eat them.

I have more finished project to share but not today. I best go get something done and get ready for our game overnight tonight.

Later

y

And the Snow Keeps Coming (And Happy Belated Valentines Day)

So we've had a lot of snow the last couple of weeks and getting to work has been interesting - more so than usual. The kids have been out of school the last two days and two days last week so it's looking like the school year will be getting longer.
We've got so much snow that we were able to go snowmobiling yesterday (for a very short time - because my new career as a snowmobiler came to a crashing end).
Here the boy and I are getting ready to take off - we didn't come back the way we left. While we were trying to turn around, I got caught in a snow bank and slid and ended up tipping us over into the guide lines of the power pole. Nice! The boy was screaming - I thought he was really hurt - he wasn't, but he milked it for all it was worth. We had a miraculous healing this morning I'm told. Anyway, needless to say we were done with the fun for the day ;-(

The daughter and I did come back (all before the unfortunate end to my new career). We had a lot of fun while it lasted.

It reminded me of my childhood in Iowa and our neighbors had snowmobiles and they used to take us out on them.

Last Friday between the snow storms, we had a Llama Club meeting. We cleaned up the barn a bit and then took some of the Girls out for a walk. Three of the four we took are pregnant and I think are due at the end of April through about June.

We have the girl and boy child in front walking Alexis and Melody.

At right we have the boy child and Melody. We think that one of ours (Sid) is with cria as well but I don't know for sure as she isn't showing the "normal" signs (spitting at the males) but she has become very affectionate which I'm told she does when she is pregnanat. She has also put on some weight so it's either she is pregnant or just fat. I'm hoping for pregnant because I really want a baby and if she is my best guess is she will be due in some time this summer. We are also planning to breed Peach this spring as well for next spring so one way or another I'll get my crias. We may test Sid with Paso this spring as well just to be sure.

Before I go for today, Happy Belated Valentines Day! I worked for a little bit on Sunday - the pizza business doesn't stop and we had a V-day promo going and then the kids went skating with the church. My boss gave me a small box of chocolates because he said I didn't have a valentine this year because of my "situation" (that's what he is calling the divorce - a situation). I didn't tell him that even though I had been married for over 9 years I only got something for valentiene's day one time in 2006. I got Jack my alpaca and a dozen roses. I just accepted his candy and sat in my office and cried. Then I went rollar skating with the kids.

Happy Belated New Year!

If I've told you once, I'll tell you a million times, I can't be trusted to update here on a regular basis.
When last we were together, I was telling you about the sad little house...well, it turned out to be worse than we thought. I had my friend Greg (he and his wife Vicki are boarding my animals while we look for a house) come up to take a look and give me the straight scoop. Greg does house restoration for a living so I figured who better to ask.
Not only did the house need a new roof and gutters, new plumbing and electric, but it is termite infested inside and out. There is no septic system in place other than a hose run out from the corner of the basement. The day we went back, there was water puddled in the basement and upon further investigation, we found that three of the four walls were bowing with deep cracks. So, along with everything else, the basement walls would need to be rebuilt too at which point the decision for me was made that if we went further, we would build a new house. The land is perfect for what we need but the house definitely is not. We stood around and joked about the bank who has the property when they said the house could be made livable for $20,000. It would take that much just to make the basement sound and then three to four times that to do all the other work that needs to be done before moving in.
The boy child and I went tonight to look at another house which was much better but the land is a little wonky. We could make it work but we are going to watch the property and keep looking.
The next hurdle is being able to get a loan to even buy a house but I am working on that and will do whatever it takes to make it happen for my kids.
So last year my new year's resolution was to learn to blog which I did (I don't do it well but it's a start). My other resolution was to finish the socks I started the year before. I still need to finish those socks ;-0) I'm finding that knitting in the round on double pointed needles isn't as easy as some make it look.
My resolution this year is to get my kids secure in a house and move on from the crap that has been our life the last year. Fingers crossed, it will be over the first of March.
If I have time tomorrow, I will try my very best to be back here with some photos of cute animals and finished projects.
y